


red bird in flight

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Family, Feminist Themes, Flying, Gen, Ginny centric, Large Families, Weasley Family, casual sexism, mentions and aftermath of possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:51:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7529839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a child, she dreamed of flying right into the heart of a storm and becoming one with the wind.</p><p>Then she grew up, the storm came and covered the whole of the earth, and little Ginny Weasley did become the wind, the invisible and unshakable enemy of the dark skies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	red bird in flight

 

 

 

“So long as I am hanging on

 I want to be young and noble. 

I want to be bold.”

 

_Mary Oliver, from Red Bird; “Desire”_

 

 

 

 

  
Ginny grew up not being allowed to fly.

She was too young, a girl, if she got hurt Mum would kill them, another player would mess up their teams; Ginny heard all the excuses, but they all boiled out to the same thing. They wanted her in the ground and out of their games. Preferably helping Mom so they wouldn't have to or degnoming the garden. Bill wanted to keep the peace, Charlie would take her side but forget about her soon enough, Percy kept judicious control over their balanced skills. The twins were the twins and Ron lived in fear that she might upstage him.

They wouldn't borrow their brooms so she stole them, made herself a game out of it.

She'd had to fight for her place in the sky. Not among them; she'd always wanted to be faster than them, fly higher. As a child, she dreamed of flying right into the heart of a storm and becoming one with the wind.

Then she grew up, the storm came and covered the whole of the earth, and little Ginny Weasley did become the wind, the invisible and unshakable enemy of the dark skies.

 

 

  
There are always lacks in large families, always things that go unnoticed. She was coddled and besieged at once, in the perfect place to notice everything, remember what no one else did. She knew the exact amount of jam Percy liked in his toast (five servings, absolutely no butter), how George rubbed the corner of his mouth when he was sad and where Ron kept his few savings. Dad scrunched his nose in happiness like Charlie did, and she mimicked them, scrunched her own freckled nose at jokes, at life.

Ginny grew up knowing this. She noticed. It made her feel like one of the detectives in Dad's paperback muggle mysteries, like something more interesting that just plain Ginny Weasley, the youngest and the frailest. She found ways to keep herself awake until everyone was asleep, stole Fred's old lock picking kit, and only then did she fly.

It was worth the tiredness. It was worth everything - there was nothing as good as flying. The moon above kept her secrets and Ginny became less than the space between stars, more than a breeze.

 

 

  
The thing about growing up with six older brothers is that all of them taught her something, even when she didn't want to learn any of it.

Bill taught her how to read. It was one of her first memories. He sat beside her in the kitchen table, him breaking filched biscuits in half for them to share while he helped her stumble through her first phrases. Together they read old magazines and the family's frayed copy of Beedle the Bard, covered with dozens of little fingerprints and tears.

It was him that taught her to love the written word. He'd let her borrow his books, the precious few that hadn't been handed down already, and speak after dinner about them. And when she was nine he gave her a little red book, with a rusted enchanted lock. It was her first diary.

 

  
One day she will have another diary, ink darker than blood, months stolen by a dead boy's memory. She will stare awake at her room in the dark, too heavy to fly, and find that first diary among her wardrobe.

She will read every scrawled entrance, the dreams of a lonely loved little girl, and think I was that girl. She used to be me. This skin is ours, only ours.

 

 

 

  
Ginny loved to fly since the first time she rose ten inches from the carpet in Bill's old toy broom. That didn't meant she had been born knowing how - she had a great deal of talent, yes, balance and grace, determination enough to cut the wind in half, but that is never enough. The first time she rose on a broom she fell, hard. And the time after.

Nerve, daring, determination -- these are things that we grow into. She didn't need help knowing how to love to fly, and she was naturally stubborn, but it was Charlie, already scarred, already wild-hearted, showed her how get up and to give it another tryIt was his arms that kept her to the broom when she was little, he that screamed with her as they dived and turned. He let her hold the broom, he taught her how to take her body and this crooked piece of wood and fly.

The higher she flew, the greater the fall. Mum screamed when she saw her reaching for the ground, but Ginny remembered the feeling, the weightlessness. Ginny rebounded from the ground and was propelled forward, upwards. All her life she rebounded upwards.

It was her first feat of accidental magic. Mum made her a cake and they ate in the of hard, sitting under the little bits of sky caught between the leaves.

  
From Percy she learned to notice things.

That was ironic, in a way, because so many tight he was an oblivious idiot with little to no social skills. He wasn't- Percival Weasley, named for a knight of legend, could read a situation with one look. He wasn't a scholar as much as an analyzer- he graded the people, judged the situations, prepared for many outcomes even when plotting for one. He had inclinations, an ambition that wouldn't have been out of place in Slytherin. Bookish as he was, they'd considered Ravenclaw for him. Hufflepuff, maybe, for his hard work and love for honesty, but that wasn't right either.

In the end, he was another lion. Ginny had never doubted it. Not because of faith, but because she noticed things. Percy knew what people thought of him, he knew what he wanted them to think, and he worked to get there. It wasn't that he chose not to notice -he noticed. He remembered, never forgot a detail, a slight. He went on anyway. There was bravery in that, boldness of purpose and manner.

Ginny, bright little laughing Ginny, was the least surprised when he defected their side. You can underestimate the lion only for so long before it turns its claws on you.

 

 

 

 

One day she'll tell a boy she loves, a terrible cracked open boy, that if you livedenough time with the twins you began to think that with enough nerve you can do anything. It will be a truth, spoken in amused confidence, a message: you too can do anything if you have enough nerve. You have nerve. Do anything.

That was her mantra, the summer after her first year, during the weeks before they went abroad. Do Anything. Read a book about the history of Egypt. Do anything. Your homework, even potions. Do anything. Steal a broom and fly away. Do anything. Run away. Come back. Don't come back. Anything.

For some time she thought the quiet would kill her. Not the quiet outside, the one inside, the silence in her head. Ginny wasn't used to the absence of noise. It threatened to drown her, after everything.

So she made her own noise. She read. Refused to write. Helped Mum in the kitchen, the garden, so they spent the mornings together crooning mellow love songs. The lyrics meant nothing to her. She sang them, high, low, creaking. No Weasley sang well.

Do anything, boldly. The rest comes after.

 

 

 

  
Ron was the first friend she ever had. No matter what it was said, they learned together first. All thatHe ever taught her was to play chess. They played often, with little more to do. She never let him lose on purpose, even when he felt guilty.

He never cheated, kept most of her secrets. When the twins went too far with her, he defended her and helped her plan her revenge. Ginny's knit in hand-me-down armor, Charlie had once joked, And he wasn't wrong. Ron had been a noble little boy.

One day she will be famous. Her name will be chanted by the crowds, and people will have to crane their necks to look at her, bright as a star and as untouchable. It will be her first big game and she will have saved the game.

With the money of her victory she will buy Ron a chest set, sturdy granite pieces with rocky tempers.They will play by the orchard and banter about scores, about never letting anyone win.

 

 

 

  
Her lessons were her own. Fall down, get up. Reread everything, everyone. Do anything, boldly, nobly. She learned them by herself, with every scrape, every sleepless night. She grew up loved, without anyone noticing how she turned into a bird at night. Sometimes she fell with no one to clean her scrapes. It happens. Get up again. Clean your own wounds. Tomorrow you will fly again.

 

 

 

  
After dinner, when the houses on the nearby village went dark and even the twin's room stilled rumbling like a danger zone, Ginny stayed awake. She didn't like being asleep anymore, hated feeling drowsy. She hummed Celestina Breadshaw under her breath. Stored her nerve, like an orchard, like sunlight in a jar.

Ginny Weasley opened a diary and poured her soul, gave her greatest secrets to ink and paper. She was nine and it was a gift from her favorite brother, she was eleven She was twelve and she read her old words, the handwriting she had outgrown, and think this was me. This girl will always live in me. Now I'm going to outgrow her too. She cried. She laughed, nose crinkled. She didn't write anymore yet, and that was alright.

  
What beings you down levels you up, the quiet moments are the loudest. Get even, get crooked at the spine, torn at the edges. Remake yourself. You can do anything, as long as you have enough nerve.

 

 

 

One night, she walked her way through the quiet house, the silent fields, the little shed. It seemed smaller than she remembered it. Inside it was dark, familiar with old mold. A little wind stirred the chain as she unlocked it.

She flew. Her bones were hollow-heavy, stretched thin. The moon kept her secrets and she remembered falling as a child, being smaller than the ground and so much smaller than the sky above and being fearless, being alive.

The broom plunged down and upwards, always upwards.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this in the beach, it might be rough.


End file.
